It’s official! I jumped the broom! Literally, actually, my aunt made me a gorgeous broom that we jumped at the alter:

I’m a married woman!

It feels great but weird at the same time. My husband and I didn’t live together before hand so its exciting yet strange to wake up to him everyday. A part of me still feels like I don’t live here (I moved into his apartment) but I do! It all is just generally a surreal feeling but I guess that comes with the newlywed bliss. I truly love lovelove my husband and I feel beyond blessed to be his wife! Woohoo! :-)Okay, okay, enough with the sappy stuff. So how did everything go? Amazingly. Here are a few photos showing just what an amazing celebration it was.

Wedding Day Hair

Now I know some of you are thinking, “Hey! I thought for sure you were going to wear your hair natural on your wedding day?” I was. I had planned on it. But what had happened was…(Starting a sentence of with “what had happened was…” makes everything sound so scandalous, no? :-) )In general, I almost never go to a salon to get my hair done because (1) I’m pretty good with it myself and (2) many salons (even one’s that “specialize” in Black hair) have no idea what to do with natural hair. Couple that with the fact that I just moved to Dallas, I was really iffy on selecting a random stylist to not just do my hair, but do a natural wedding style, of all things. Furthermore, the natural wedding style couldn’t be just any ol’ wedding hairdo, but it had to fit into my 1940’s vintage hollywood theme. Initially, it was my intent to have my hair something like this:[caption id="attachment_1695" align="aligncenter" width="352"]

photo via: http://foxyj26.tumblr.com/[/caption]Because I didn’t know any stylist and I wasn’t about to let a random person do my hair for my wedding, I originally resolved to do my hair myself. This idea was quickly killed, however, when I ended up doing my hair as a bridesmaid for my best friend’s wedding. There was so much going on the day of her wedding and so much running around to do that I was completely stressed when doing my own hair, even though I had practiced beforehand. Since I felt so stressed doing my hair for someone else’s wedding, I knew I would be completely overwhelmed the day of my own wedding. Thus, I had to come up with a way to test out a local natural stylist.

Finding a Stylist

Six weeks out from my wedding, I heard about a natural hair show that was happening and I got the bright idea to be a model in the show as a way of testing out a local natural hair stylist. I figured if I liked the way the stylist did my hair for the show, then I would feel more confident about letting her work on my hair for my wedding.Let’s just say…this did not turn out well. I will not name the stylist or the salon, but my “style” for the hair show was not good. My husband (then fiance) actually laughed at me when I showed up at his door like this:

So what was a bride to do? By this point I had little over a month until my wedding day! Since (1) having a retro 1940s hair do was the most important thing to me and (2) I didn’t want any mishaps on my wedding day, I decided to do a finger-wave style on straightened hair. Its an easy, predictable style that I’ve had done in the past and I knew it would look nice on my wedding day.

I ended up calling my friend who is natural but gets her hair straightened most of the time for a recommendation. She referred me to a great stylist who knocked it out of the park! And voila! This was me on my wedding day:

Honeymoon Hair

Though I didn’t get to wear my hair in a naturally textured style for the wedding, I rocked a wash n’ go during our entire honeymoon. We went away to beautiful Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and had a blast.[caption id="attachment_1709" align="aligncenter" width="614"]

Gorgeous evening sunsets![/caption]

Honeymoon Natural Hair Regimen

I was actually somewhat anxious about what to do with my hair on the honeymoon because:

1. I didn’t want to lug a bunch of hair products and tools with me
2. I didn’t want to spend hours detangling, twisting, or otherwise “doing” my hair
3. I wanted to look sexy at all times for my new hubby! :-) No silk scarfs, bonnets, or Miss Celie braids for me!

So I packed:

• one bottle of V05 Conditioner for co-washing
• one (regular-sized) bottle of Aussie Moist Conditioner for (leave-in) conditioning and styling
• one wide tooth comb
• one denman-style brush

That’s it! I co-washed my hair the second day we were there and any day we went swimming or I felt that my hair needed it.

Things to note

1. I didn’t even attempt to wash my hair in sections. I would just stand under the shower, split my hair into two sections, one over each shoulder, and I would cowash each side with the v05 conditioner.
2. I only loosely detangled. With one side under the shower stream, I would loosely detangle with the wide-tooth comb, then move on to the other side. Detangling like this took maybe two minutes, tops.

After cowashing, I would add a crap load of Aussie conditioner to my sopping wet hair, and smooth large sections with my denman brush, a la the Tightly Curly Method (which I explain here). I would add a few twists in the front since my hair doesn’t “clump” well there and I would just let my hair air dry, as the weather in Mexico was perfect. To sleep, I would just put my hair in a high ponytail to stretch out my hair for the next day. (But absolutely no head scarf!!!)So to say my wedding went beyond my expectation would be an understatement. Even though there was a lot of stress leading up to it, I had so much fun both at the wedding and on my honeymoon.Are you married? What was your wedding like? How did you wear your hair? If you aren't married, do you plan on wearing your hair natural for your big day? What kind of theme do you want for your wedding? I want to know so leave a comment!Also, be sure to check out my Facebook fan page for more wedding and honeymoon pictures!